Framing media masculinities: Men's lifestyle magazines and the biopolitics of the male body

Abstract

Over the last few years, there have been more and more men's lifestyle magazines being published, providing men with a plethora of self-help articles. This article aims to understand this recent phenomenon through an analysis of the Italian edition of Men's Health, the most important men's lifestyle magazine in Italy. The main hypothesis is that the recent and growing success of Men's Health in the Italian magazine market is a reflection of men's changing gender relations and identities. By offering a wide spectrum of 'self-care' advice, Men's Health contributes to the production and reproduction of a (male) bodily 'order' accomplished through 'body techniques' and 'technologies of the self. The work is based on a media frame analysis of the Italian edition of Men's Health', discourse analysis is used to identify the different textual frames producing the discourse on men's lives and bodies, while a series of focus groups identify the audience frames, i.e. the different ways the readers 'make sense' of the magazine.